In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and

Hear the voice of Victor Hugo, titan of letters and prophet of the human spirit, who declared: “In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.” This statement, bold and fiery, is no mere jest—it is Hugo’s vision of language itself, the vessel through which civilizations breathe and dream. He reminds us that languages shape not only what we say, but how thought itself takes form.

The meaning of his words lies in the distinction between styles of expression. In French, Greek, and Latin, Hugo saw a clear separation between prose—measured, structured, a form of clarity for reason—and poetry—ornamented, musical, a form of exaltation for the soul. The gulf between the two made each distinct, with its own dignity and purpose. But in English, Hugo saw no such gulf. To him, English prose bore the cadence of poetry, and poetry often mingled with prose, such that they seemed as one stream. This was, in his eyes, both strength and limitation: strength, for the language was rich in music even in its plainest speech; limitation, for it lacked what he deemed the “privilege” of true prose—noble, weighty, and distinct.

The ancients valued this distinction. The Romans honed their prose in the speeches of Cicero, where reason marched with discipline, each phrase a soldier in a grand oration. Their poetry, however, soared in Virgil’s Aeneid, each line resounding like a hymn to gods and heroes. The Greeks too separated philosophy from epic song—Plato’s prose dialogues from Homer’s verse. Hugo, steeped in these traditions, revered this separation as the mark of a language’s fullness, where the rational and the lyrical each had their own sacred altar.

Yet in English, the line blurred. Consider the King James Bible, whose translators intended prose, yet gave the world passages that thunder like poetry: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Though written in simple form, its rhythm carries the majesty of verse. Shakespeare, too, shattered the boundaries, writing plays where prose and poetry wove together seamlessly—commoners speaking in prose that often shone like verse, kings uttering lines that sang though cloaked in plainness. To Hugo, this lack of distinction was curious, perhaps troubling: a language without a separate prose seemed, to him, incomplete.

But one may also see this as a hidden power of English. The merging of prose and poetry allows the tongue to move between clarity and music without boundary. It explains why English novels—from Dickens to Melville—often read with the grandeur of poetry, why even essays and speeches carry rhythm and fire. The very criticism Hugo leveled may be, to others, its greatest gift: that in English, even the ordinary breathes poetry.

The lesson is twofold. First, we learn from Hugo the value of respecting the forms of language—to recognize that prose and poetry, when distinct, each carry their own power. Reason needs clarity, and song needs rhythm. Second, we see that language itself is never bound by one vision alone. What Hugo saw as weakness, others have seen as strength. The English tongue, blurring boundaries, teaches us that sometimes greatness lies not in separation, but in fusion.

Practical is this path: when you write in prose, let it carry the discipline of reason, yet do not fear the fire of poetry seeping into its bones. When you write in poetry, let it soar, but do not forget the clarity that prose can lend. Above all, let your language—whatever tongue you speak—be a vessel for truth, beauty, and wisdom. For whether distinct or mingled, whether French or English, prose and poetry exist to reveal the heart of man, and to echo the eternal music of the soul.